There have been times, not least the time of the birth of Athenian democracy, when most of the people who thought and wrote about human wholeness concluded that no one could be a whole human being, no...
Like me, you may struggle deeply with what it means to live well. We are all seeking to take these scattered moments of meaning and weave them together into a beautiful whole.
But if I am to let my life speak things I want to hear, things I would gladly tell others, I must also let it speak things I do not want to hear and would never tell anyone else! My life is not only a...
In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the reality of what it means to “take up our cross” in our daily lives: Sometimes we suffer u...
Holy and Gracious God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We give you thanks for the gift of life, for the gift of Jesus our Savior, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and for the gift of this sacrament that ...
Compassionate God, you know the purposes of our hearts and the will of all creation. Hear with mercy our confession that we have not cared for Earth and all creatures as you meant for us to do; we hav...
Reign and Rain down, Glorious One Salvation flows from your side Living water to our desert to our frail clay to our dust Creation flows from you New life springing up Hope and wholeness Budding and ...
Romans 8:28, 2 Chronicles 7:14, Philippians 4:19, Matthew 5:14-16, James 1:5, Psalm 30:2
God—our Father ... our Savior ... our Counselor and Friend: Thank you for daring to meet us at the most unlikely places, and in the most unexpected times of our lives. Thank you for redeeming our pain...
Father God: You know our thoughts, before we speak them. You know our needs, without us saying them. So, You invite us into Your presence, with arms wide open, not to hear our laundry lists of wants a...
We long to see our lives whole, to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Lacking a vision of a l...
Holiness, as taught in the Scriptures, is not based upon knowledge on our part. Rather, it is based upon the resurrected Christ in-dwelling us and changing us into His likeness.
We long to see our lives whole and to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Are we really living...
Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will percei...
How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences, While some...
Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. Solitude begins with a time and place for God, and for him alone. If we really believe not only that God exists but also that he i...
Philippians 2:, Isaiah 7:14, Luke 2:1-20, Matthew 1:, Colossians 3:10, 1 John 3:1, 2 Corinthians 5:17
You have wonderfully created us, O God, and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature. Allow us to share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesu...
James 1:2-4, Psalm 147:3, John 16:33, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 8:28, Psalm 34:18
In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...
What are we hear for in the first place? The fundamental answer…is that we we’re “here for” is to become genuine human beings, reflecting the God in whose image we’re made, and doing so in worship on ...
Colossians 1:9-10, Ephesians 1:17-18, Proverbs 2:6, James 1:5, John 14:26
Holy Spirit, pour out upon us wisdom and understanding, that, being taught by you in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened to receive all that leads to life and holiness. Through Jesus Ch...
Background to the Letter and Passage Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was probably intended for wider distribution and use among the various churches around Ephesus. As such, there is no particular cri...
Matthew 5:48, 1 John 3:2-3, Galatians 5:16-17, Philippians 3:13-14, Colossians 3:1-2, Ephesians 4:22-24
The scholastics used to say: Homo non proprie humanus sed superhumanus est —which means that to be properly human, you must go beyond the merely human.
Psalm 27:4, Luke 15:11-32, Mark 10:17-22, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Colossians 3:10
We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we cannot help being happy: we have already achieved something of the fullness of being for which ...
Pastor: There is one Body and one Spirit People: There is one hope in God’s call to us. Pastor: One Lord, one faith, one Baptism, People: one God and Father of us all. ...
Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...
The Boundless Mystery we call God is continuously at work in the life of every one of us. In everything that happens to us, God is always seeking to draw us—and all creation—into greater fullness of l...
Psalm 103:2-3, John 1:14, Philippians 2:6-8, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Mark 6:1-13
As we come together, we are gathered by a God who amazes and astounds. We are gathered to experience again God’s power and healing. We are gathered by God who has stepped into our reality as a human b...
In your wisdom, O God, you call us here to worship you. We gather, alive to the Word of God. You call us to be fully alive with your life abundant, ready to listen and respond with heart, soul, st...
Awe encourages us to think of God as a transcendent presence: someone outside and beyond our own small concerns and our own vulnerable lives. Awe opens us up to the possibility of living always on the...